The wind blows gently as the shadows of the trees sway on the carpet in your living room and you watch your new son trying to grab the shadows with determination and you can’t help but smile. Despite the last year, you’ve found some new solace and you talk t your baby and tell hi the same stories a certain grandfather told you many, many years ago. He looks up and smiles. It’s amazing how such turmoil has occurred, but seeing that smile or when you hear your wife laugh when the baby does something cute just warms you like the sun coming out of the clouds after a thunderstorm. Yeah, it does sound like fluff, but its true. Just have that time to spend with your little guy and reminisce about your own early comic book memories as you move them to the next generation. However, as you share in these new memories and try to keep yourself up to date in the world of comics while trying to score that 1 edition trade for less than $5 or less from an online site, a funny thing happens.
An old passion of yours reignites. I’m not talking about sneaking out a comic book from your long box or putting in an old movie, but a story telling passion of writing. I can remember a time when I hated writing. In high school, I remember gritting my teeth like Wolverine as I dreaded another English assignment. You can’t count the number of times you just were trying to find someway to finish the next paragraph so you would be finished. Then, after a time a another funny thing happens in college, you start to like writing. During my undergraduate days in theatre arts I started to learn how to tell stories on stage and then apply them to paper.
Not just interrupting other writers’ work into your own but actually crafting and writing your own fluent stories. Before you know it, you are enrolled in three play writing workshops and keeping a notebook of various characters you are creating in your spare time. It got so bad, I started cooking up characters out of nowhere and then I did something else, I learned how to write comic book scripts. I started writing so many scripts, not only did I start to get good at it, but I started submitting them to various companies big and small. I would even hit comic conventions up and would get personal feedback from professional editors, writers, artists (plus the occasional inker) on how to improve.
I listen to their advice and I would write everyday, a letter, in a notebook, on a computer. I even once submitted a short script that was almost bought by Marvel Comics (honest to God). Sadly, the title I almost sol the script for was ending in a few months, and my story couldn’t be bought as a result, I was so close. After that I kind of dropped the entire idea of ever getting published. So what happened after that? You continue to feel discourage and you end up dropping even more ideas of even writing on the professional level.
It’s not that big of a shock, when you channel these ideas, story board and take actual time to get professional criticism, why not try and take a chance and like I said, go with that gut feeling not to flip the scared coin? Of course, I chose the scarred side and let the dream die. So, I tried to live out other dreams, careers, home, family, and all the classic ones. We all know it takes forever to get published. We try and live life to the better term and just put away childish things and become a man. Then the son becomes the father, and that spark in you starts a fire again.
Now, you’re older, wiser, and have more real life experiences to channel into your work. You pick up a pen and paper and like riding a bike, stories start to flow out of your hand and you have a ten page outline and later a thirty-two page story. Then a series and then you get another spark. Your own POV and experience and you soon start a podcast later a vidcast and then you have three blogs and your twitter columns are being posted left and right. The spark truly has come back and you are a buzz with new life and soon you are comparing Jesse Quick to Outrun and explaining why the MC2 Universe and characters are just as important as relaunch than the Ultimate Universe a dozen times and soon people are following your reviews.
Your former comic book reading life has just taken a new form and a new respect and passion for them is reborn.
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